Sunlight is Not the Best Disinfectant: On Fogel, VMAC, MLK, and Acceptance

Published January 22, 2008

By Max Bookman

In a recent email to the student body, President Fogel addressed the Vermont Marriage Advisory Council’s renting of Davis Center facilities on Saturday to host a forum where their message against gay marriage would be espoused.

VMAC’s website ( vtmarriage.org), adorned with what appear to be photos from a 1979 JCPenney catalogue, innocently claims that the organization wishes to facilitate the debate on gay marriage in Vermont.

But it’s clear that VMAC members aren’t rushing home to catch The L Word or LOGO.

UVM is a “marketplace of ideas,” wrote Mr. Fogel as he defended the VMAC, where all points of view, even unpopular ones, must be put on display. After all, in a marketplace it would be unfair to sell Coke and Pepsi but not RC Cola - those three RC drinkers out there hold the right to have a lame soda preference.

But every marketplace has quality standards. Our society — the Super Stop and Shop of Ideas- has come to differentiate the usual harmless unpopular ideas from hateful ones; there’s Carrot Top, and there’s Hitler. We have accepted that free speech does not protect messages of intolerance. Otherwise, why not invite a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan or American Nazi Party to contribute their thoughts to our marketplace of ideas at the Davis Center?

Mr. Fogel may pat the University on the back for watching an unaffiliated group hold a forum against gay marriage in the hub of student activity, in a school where many students are part of a thriving Burlington gay community. But there is nothing brave or bold about importing a forum for intolerance (Google: Skokie, Illinois controversy).

Fifty years ago, many Americans charged that marriage between a black man and a white woman was an abomination, and they found ample acceptance as part of a larger movement of anti-black sentiment. It took revolutionaries like Martin Luther King to call for tangible, not nominal, equality. Dr. King helped make a country realize that it is unacceptable to sanction unequal treatment of human beings on account of race. Those who thought otherwise were silenced- barred from voicing their intolerant opinions in a legitimate forum again.

Today, the alleged sanctity of marriage is again being called into question as part of a large and vocal movement of anti-gay sentiment. But the LGBTQA community has no Martin Luther King ( Ellen may come close), so our society has yet to fully identify calls for unequal treatment of humans on account of sexual orientation as unacceptable. We had a chance to change that on Saturday. UVM claims to be a “community” that “improves the world,” and an institution on the cutting edge of social justice. It seems to follow that such a school would follow in the footsteps of Dr. King by decrying these agents of intolerance, tearing off the veil of legitimacy that cloaks homophobia, and turning its attention to those who have yet to understand that all people deserve equal treatment under the law.

Granted, the debate on gay marriage is far from settled. But being on the forefront of social justice means taking steps that others have yet to take. People will go to great lengths to demonstrate the strength of their convictions. George Wallace stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Those who first stood up for their ideals in the face of opposition are eternally venerated for their bravery. But time has proven that tolerance and egalitarianism do not always triumph in the pages of history.

President Fogel concluded his e-mail with some words from Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The quote, by the way, has nothing to do with anything — Brandeis wrote it as part of an argument for increased government transparency. It is baffling because it leaves us wondering just what needs to be disinfected in our peachy marketplace of ideas. Perhaps he’s cryptically referring to those anti-gay marriage types at the Davis Center.

Obviously, Justice Brandeis had never been introduced to Mr. Clean (disinfectant’s biggest ally), but as a jewish man in the early 20th century who experienced the ugly face of intolerance first-hand, he would have surely supported Dr. Martin Luther King’s calls for tolerance. Perhaps if the Justice were alive to observe Dr. King, he would have revised his remarks. After all, acceptance, not sunlight is the best disinfectant.

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